Students will be able to apply knowledge of biology to one or more contemporary issues in society.

In my Microbiology course (BIOL 304), we were instructed to create informative brochures that could be shared with the public to educate them about diseases and infections that affected many people (BIOL 304 Shingles Brochure). This helped me interpret scientific literature and reorganize this information into a format that a general audience would be able to understand. This assignment would help develop the critical skill of explaining scientific findings to the general population.

I also took a Toxicology course (BIOL 364) that I found to be really interesting. We learned about all kinds of toxins, how they affected the human body, as well as their prevalence and use throughout history. At the end of the semester, we were asked to find a site that was contaminated with some sort of toxin and perform a risk assessment (BIOL 364 Risk Assessment). I thought this was a really unique independent project that we got to do where we evaluated how damaging this particular site and situation could be to the surrounding community. We were also able to use our knowledge regarding the cleanup of toxins to figure out a proposed method of removing this toxin from our chosen community in order to reduce exposure to dangerous toxins.

I intended on studying abroad in Ireland to study healthcare on a global scale later that year, but because of the pandemic ended up taking Determinants of Global Healthcare (NURS 495) as an online course. Although this course wasn’t what I had originally intended on taking, I did find it really informative to learn about various health crises and write about different ways we could go about fixing them. I ended up writing a paper on the lack of clean water in Nigeria (NURS 495 Policy Brief 1). This research revealed the difficulty in accessibility of clean water, as well as the numerous negative health effects that contaminated water has on public health, particularly in impoverished communities.

These courses allowed me to apply my expertise in the biological field to contexts outside of the science realm. Whether it be informing policy or educating the public, I have developed the ability to communicate with people outside of my field in order to address multi-disciplined problems plaguing society.